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Shakespeare on Film in the Classroom

Shakespeare on Film in the Classroom

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 109 682 CS 202 162- AUTHOR Mullin, Michael TITLE Shakespeare on Film in the Classrdom. PUB DATE Nov 74 NOTE 12p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the. National Council of Teachers of English. (64th, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 28-30, 1974); Not available in hard copy due to marginal legibility of original document. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.76 PLUS POSTAGE. HC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *Annotated Bibliographies; Drama; *Films; Higher Education; *Instructional Films; Instructional Media; Secondary Education IDENTIFIERS *Shakespeare (William) ABSTRACT A course at the University of Illinois entitled "Shakespeare on Film" is discussed briefly, and an annotated list of Shakespeare films for the classroom teacher is provided in this paper. Thirteen films are listed: three versions of "," "," "," four versions of "," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "," " and ," and "." Each annotation gives the name of the director, major stars, distributor, year of, production and mode (black and white or color). (TS)

Michael Mullin Department of English University of Illinois Urbana, Illinois 61801

SHAKESPEARE ON FILM IN THE CLASSROOM Because Shakespeare wrote for the theatre, his plays come tO fullest life in performance. Yet students in high school and college rarely see the plays performed. Instead, they labor through a knotty text, coming to know the plays as plots and puns, but getting little sense of the sounds and sights latent in the written words. This is a great loss. Worse, such labor for small rewards often leads students to distrust their teacher's enthusiasms, and to dislike Shakespeare. This experience, or one very like it, prejudices many students before they enter Shakespeare classes at the University of Illinois. To overcome this problem, inherent in teaching all drama, we have found a partial solution in Shakespeare on film. Each term The Shakespeare Film Series shows about a dozen films, which form the core of my course "Shakespeare on Film" (English 205 F1), and which supplement a wide range of courses in Shakespeare, film, and theatre. Although help- ful, films raise problems, both practical and pedagogical, which have pre- vented them from receiving the wide use they deserve. By way of a guide, I wish first to outline the practical difficulties of using films to teach Shakespeare, and then to examine briefly the films I have found most in- structive. Unlike books, which one may purchase and keep, films are controlled by distributors who rent copiesat rates determined by the nature of the showing, and this arrangement presents some practical difficulties. To qualify fur non-theatrical, classroom rates (usually $50 to $100 per film), no admission may be charged, dor, to protect commercial cinemas, may the film be advertised in any way. Each 16 mm. film is sent special delivery '(air mail), insured for $200, thus adding about $5 to the rental price. Because film distributers have a limited number of prints, one must order (by telephone, with written confirmation following) well in advance of show- date to be sure the film will be available. How may films be integrated into a course in Shakespeare? The answer will vary, of course, with the needs and interests of each course. In my course, a general introduction to Shakespeare, we study about a dozen plays

per term, about one a week, with some plays being studied in several film versions. The plays are always read and discussed before they are seen on film. In a course in which fewer plays were studied, one might show a film of the play first, then study the text, and then return to the same hid (or another of the same play) for a re-evaluation. Indeed, one might struc- ture a semester's work around the differmit interpretations of the play of- fered by three different films--say Hamlet by Olivier, Kozintsev, and Ric- chardson. The possibilities for good teaching are myriad. More important than the mechanics of the course, are the broad ques- tions which arise when film is the performance medium for plays designed for Elizabethan theatre. How does the selective eye of the camera inter- act with the equally selective imagery of the poetic text? How does the play change when film portrays what Shakespeare's actors on their bare stage described? To what extent can one cut the text legitimately in rec- ognition of these different properties of the two media, one visual, the ether verbal? And, ultimately, how true are the interpretations of indi- vidual plays embodied in the films? To be sure, there are no final answers to such questions, for they possess an interpretative richness which makes the plays on film a delight to teach. Yet different films permit one to fo- ens on different issues. One must select the films, and thereby the issues that suit ones course. Because previewing is practically impossible, a guide to the films is necessary to choose those appropriate to specific classroom needs. Below, along with rental information I give a thumbnail sketch of each major Shakespeare film. HAMLET d , s. Olvier, , Basil Sidney, Eileen Berlie. B/W. 1948. United Films, 1122 S. Cheyenne, Tulsa, Uk. 74119. Olivier's film is justly famous. It won five Oscars and the Venice Film Festival Award. As Olivier's voice announces at the opening, he has chosen toas "the tragedy of a man who could not makeinterpret up his the play

mind." What might sound like a rather conservative, even Romantic inter- pretation of the playdoes not, however reveal itself to be so. The pulsates in and out of focus to the pounding beat of Ham-

let's heart. The action unfoldsin castle that camerawork renders a a

weirdlabyrinth of tunnels, alcoves, and stairways. Gertrude is much closer in age to Hamlet than one expects--add hisjealoUsy of his uncle takes on strange colors. Music underscores the movement with a series of leitmotifs for each character. And locale is given symbolic overtones. The tower to which the Ghost leads Hamlet he returns to when contemplating suicide, and there he is finally laid to rest by 's men. This interpretation is provacative, as any must be, and criticshave found much to their dislike. Olivier's shrunken text, his mannered acting, his dabbling in Freudian symbolism--allthese'have raised their ire. Yet all have precedents on the stage and some, we find now, are antecedents of similar speculation by critics and scholars, among them Dover-Wilson and Wilson Knight, to name the most famous. HAMLET, d. Grigori Kozintsev, B/W. 1964. , UA Sixteen, 759 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10022. Russian speech, with subti- tles from the Bad Quarto Hamlet, make this a difficult Hamlet for those who do not know the play well. For those who do, it is a fascinating exploration of the play's imagery through different visual symbols. In his Diaries, Kozintsev himself describes the environment his film eloquently portrays: "The architecture of Elsinore does not consist in walls, but in the ears which the walls have. There are doors, the better to eavesdrop behind, windows, the better to spy from. The walls are made up of guards. Every sound gives birth to echoes, repercussions, whispers, rustling. . . . I have in mind stone, iron, fire, , and seal Stone: the walls of Elsi- more, the firmly built government prison, on which armorial bearings and sinister bas-reliefs had been carved centuries ago. Iron: weapons, the in- human forces of oppression, the ugly steel faces of war. Fire: anxiety, revolt, movement the trembling flame of the candles at Claudius's cele- brations; raging fiery tongues; the windblown lamps on the stage erected for 'The Mousetrap.' Sea: waves, crashing against the bastions, ceaseless movement, the change the of tides, the boiling of chaos, and again the silent, endless surface of glass. Earth: the world beyond Elsinore, amid stones--a bit of field tilled by a ploughman, the sand pouring out of Yorick's skull, and the handfull of dust in the palm of the wanderer-heir

to the throne of Denmark." (C.K.', Shakespeare: Time and Conscience, Lon- don:. 1967; 225, 266). HAMLET. d. , s. , Marianne Faith- full.Color. ,1969. Visual Aides Service, University of Illinois, 1325 S. Oak, Champaign, Il. 61820. Richardson's Hamlet is easily the most exci- ting and most approachable version of the play on film. Rich costumes de- light the eye. Swift-paced camerawork, nearly always in closeup, keep the point of view fluid, so that, as in the nunnery scene, we keep moving a- round Hamlet. There, we first see through Hamlet's eye's as she lies in dishabille on a hammock, and then, abruptly shifting, we look through the eyes of and Claudius, who stand behind a tapestry peering at the couple. Although point of view changes, characterizations are clear- cut: Hamlet, a post-graduate student, finds himself called away from his studies. Horatio is donnish.' Ophelia, played by of Rolling Stones fame, is a wanton--she laughs when her brother speaks of her "chaste treasure" and she is all the more hurt by Hamlet's rejection be- cause she has already accepted him as a lover. Claudius is a bloat debau- chce, a mighty drinker before the Lord„but short on the cunning we usu- ally attribute to him. For cunning, Richardson gives us a shrewd Polonius. Despite warrant in the text for what Richardson does, many critics felt that, as Williamson's rough twang betrayed the verse to reach emotions with- in it, Richardson betrayed the play to make a stunning, anti-heroic film. HENRY V. d. Laurence Olivier, s. Olivier, . B/W. 1944. United Films (address as above). Made in the blood,sweat, and, tears of World WarOlivier's II, film bears the marks of its origins, and this dates it--a dating which isby no means disadvantageous. Its nationalistic fervor makes the great St. Crispin's speech ring all the louder when one thinks of the troops who hit the beaches at Normandy. The French, effem- inate to the point of inanity, are best understood as reflecting the weak- ness of Vichy leaders. So too, Bardolph, Pistol, CaptainsJamie, MacMorris, and Fluellen, and the common soldiers are homespun British types full of barracks humor and sentimentality. While extremely effective for the film's first audience, these characterizations are not always comfortable for those

who remember Vietnam, and the film therefore may be hard to teach. While not easy, it is nonetheless interesting, however, because Ol- ivier uses different settings for the action. Beginning with a replica of the Globe stagingfor the first act, afterwards the scenerybecomes sur- realistic, with decor reminiscent of medieval illuminated manuscripts, and then, changing again for the battle of Agincourt, it becomes realistic, with the vasty fields of France rendered literally in a long tracking shot in which we See the French warriors, seemingly invincible in heavy armor, galloping towards the English bowmen. Later, locale shifts back again, to view the aftermath of the war in a surreal winter landscape, Pistol eat- ing Fluellen's leek and stealing chickens, and Harry courting Kate in the arabesque, picture-book palace. In the end, setting shifts•yet again, to our surprise, as the applause and shouts begin, to show the player king and his player queen on the wooden boards of the Globe. JULIUS CAESAR. d. Jobleph Mankiewicz, s. , , . B/W. 1953. films Incorporated, 4420 Oakton Street, Skokie, Il. 60076. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar extends the traditions of "Shakespeare illustrated" from the realism of the theatre to the realism of the film. In settings familiar through Hollywood epics like Spartacus and Ben-Hur, the play unfolds, somewhat abbreviated in text and extended in action. Marlon Brando's Marc Antony, his muscled body oiled for the race when we first see him, turns out to be far less noble than the Antony who courts Cleopatra. This is largely because Brando is uncomfortable with eloquence. In his eulogy to Caesar, rayed in marmoreal settings with thousands shout- ing encouragement, he conceals from them a cynical smirk which he lets the camera see. Gielgud's Gassius, the other hand, is stagey. And James Mason's Brutus seems more naive than noble. In the battle scenes at the end, the director "opens out" the play, sothat we see Brutus' army march to its death up a canyon ringed by the bloodthirsty hordes of Antony and Oc- tavius. The ironies and confusions of the last act are pushed aside to make room for this spectacle, and we realize quite clearly why Shakespeare kept his battles offstage. Overall, the film is usefull for teaching because its errors and virtues are obvious.

MACBETH.. d. , s. Welles., Roddy McDowell, Jeannette Nolan. B/W. 1948. Audio-Brandon Films, 34 MacQuestin Blvd. South, Mount Vernon, W.Y. 10550. Welle's Macbeth is an adaptation of Shakespeare's play--not the play

itself. Welles not only added the priest as a symbol of the "Christian law and order" which opposed Macbeth, he also cut the text a good deal and then rearranged scenes. He even interpreted lines from other Shakespeare plays. All of this was outrageous. Yet Welles was.not wholly false to Shakespeare's play. There is of course a sense in which Macbeth is leagued with the infernal against the holy supernatural of Malcolm and the saintly King Edward. And, one might argue further in Welles's defense, the rearrangement of the text was common enough practice in Shakespeare's own time--indeed the Folio text ,seems to represent some such rearrangement. The ultimate value of the film, however, lies in its ability to stimulate fresh interpretation of the play as we have it. In this way, although avowedly experimental, it may teach us, as do even those experiments which are failures, for we may still learn from their mistakes. MACBETH: d. George Schaefer. s. and . Color. 1960. Audio-Brandon films (address as above). Schaefer's Macbeth is a curious amalgam of things good and bad. It was made for the Hallmark Hall off Fame television series, with the hope of a second audience in the cinemas. As a result. camera shots are usually close-up or midrange and the colors seem to have been chosen as much for their ability to translate well into black-and- white as for their aptness to the play's themes. Macbeth's "so fair and foul a day", for instance, is spoken against picture-postcard Scots scenery, blue skies and furse-covered hills. Just as the camera technique is hybrid, so is the acting. Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, both somewhat declined into the vale of years, are not well served by a camera which brings the audience so close that the large gestures of the stage seem overdone, often ludicrous.

While Judith Anderson is suitably haggish and venomous, Evans, with a moist eye and a cheerful, well-fed face, in no way suggests the secretest man of blood. His hallueinations,done with double exposure, seem no visitations frm the otherworld, but merely the wine-soaked dreams of an aging dypsomaniac. As with Mankiewicz's Caesar,Julius it is a film which teaches well because it invites students to be critical, and rewards their efforts with a fresh under- standing of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

THRONE OF BLOOD. d. . B/W. 1957. Audio-Brandon Films (address as above). The cast is Japanese, as is the text (with English subtitles). Kumonusu-Djo, properly translated "The Castle of the Spider's Web," is Kurosawa's transmutation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Many have written of it as one of the finest Shakespearean films made--despite the fact that the text is not Shakespeare's. Their judgment stems from Kurosawa's success in giving the imaginative essence of Shakespeare's play, transposed into a different culture and seen through a different medium. Shakespeare's becomes Japan in its feudal period. The primitive emotionsof his

Thanes find expression in the stylized postures and gestures of the class- ical Nohdrama. Yet the pace and action of the original conception remain. Japanese formality gives an impact to the breaking of ceremony in the ban- quet scene that has the force of the original. If there were ever a case to be made for the "subtext" of a Shakespearean play, this film must be the example which most clearly illustrates it. Even things which editors have argued were once part of Shakespeare's play--such as the horses seen by Simon Forman but excluded from the Folio text--will be seen in Kurosawa's interpretation. Thus, for the classroom, it poses in extrtme form the questions of authenticity and adaptation which must enter all discussions of filmed Shakespear. And because it is the play without the words, it provides a conceptual model, for study of Macbeth's non-verbal dimension—the actions, sights, and sounds which come to life only in performance. MACBETH d. , s. , Francesca Annis, Color. 1971. 'Columbia Cinematheque, 71l Fifth Avenue, New York: N.Y.'.10022. Even before it came out. Polanski's Macbeth suffered from bad publicity. The murders led newspapers to see the film's gory violence as Polanski's exorcism of his private devils. And Hugh Hefner's Playboy logo, to say nothing of his pre-release puffs, had papers quipping about "Lady MacBuff." Such distractions aside, it is an interesting interpretation of Macbeth. The de-romanticized medieval Scotland is a tribal society, haunted by druidic cults, its mores governed by blood guilt, and its warriors by bloodlust, in every way closer to what Scotland meant to Shakespeare's audience than to what it has meant to audiences since Walter Scott and Robert Burns. All this is to the good, and it supports Polanski's manipu-

lation of the text and plot to suggest a repeating pattern of murder and violence, a reading underlined by the glimpse at the end of the film of lame Donalbain slouching towards the Witches' cairn. Yet there is a vacuum at the film's center, for the young. actors Jon Finch and Francesca Annis are simply too callow to convey the great emotions which shake the . Finch, who does the great soliloquies mainly voice over unspeaking lips, seems plagued with migraine headaches, not a mind full of scorpions, and Francesca Annis snivels her way through her chastisement of Macbeth, omitting, perhaps in deference to Hefner's inter- ests, references to woman's breasts and nursing babes. Overall, a 'stimu- lating film, sophisticated in its execution, and, despite flaws, every- where interesting. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S' DREAM. d. . s. , , , and others from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Color. 1969. Audio-Brandon (address as above). Hall's Dream is probably the best acted Shakespeare film. Derived from productions at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959 and 1963, it seeks to transform a successful stage interpretation into a successful film--not by filming the actors onstage but by seeking a new cinematic idiom for poetic drama. The results are wonderful for those who place Shakespeare first, and less than wonderful for those who expect films to be films. The handheld camera and closeup shots with which Hall focuses on the speakers--the better to direct, our attention to the poetry they speak --these techniques. remind us of television documentary. and at times they may make the speakers appear laughable, especially when they speak directly to the camera. Equally distracting can be the Carnaby-street outfits (mini- skirts for the girls, a leather outfit for Hippolyta), the naked fairies, and the heavily accented speech of the workingmen. Yet these "faults" follow lines of interpretation clearly drawn by Shakespeare. The laughable, self- parodying lovers are a fit rendering of the adolescents in the play--albeit an anti-romantic one. The naked fairies are much closer to Shakespeare's wood demons than the creatures or .gauze and tinsel from Mendelssohn's era. And, if the rough speech of British workingmen falls at first harshly on American ears, it is perhaps no more so than it was upon the ears of upper class Englishmen. Ian Richardson's , whosevoice makes the verse resonate, is everywhere the vexed, powerful English Pan, assisted by Ian Holm as Puck, equally adept at verse, who literally sniffs out the lovers

in the forest. Diane Rigg is ripe for love, as are the other teenagers, full of the right words but awkward in the execution of the ardor the words bespeak. The workingmen, led by Paul Hardwick as Bottom, are played nearly straight, as bumbling, well meaning laborers who aim to please, yet are none toocertain that they will. Once the film's special conventions are accepted, it is a delight to see and teach. OTHELLO. d. Stuart Burge. S. Olivier, , : Color. 1965. Warner brothers, Non-Theatrical Division, 4000 Warner Blvd.

Burbank, Cal . 91505. With minimal concessions to the film Olivier's Oth- ello records the National Theatre production of the play. Although camera angles change, the action is played on a full stage set, and the result is a curious mutation. One is overwhelmed at times by the power of Olivier's acting at close range, his broadlipped, languid smile, his rolling sail- or's gait, and his passions pulsing, like the great vein in his forehead, just beneath the skin. But we rarely forget that it is the three-sided stage on which all action takes place. Just as the camera cannot fail to see the smudges of blackface on Maggie Smith as she lies limp and dead in Othella's arms, it cannot fail to remind us, by a thousand such minute distractions, that a film of stage play is a contradiction in terms. As a film of Othello, it is overlong and at times evenawkward. As a record

of a treat performance, it is nonpareil, making just enough concession to the demands of the camera. Advanced students will find much to ponder. . d. , s. , Susan Shentall. Color. 1954. United films, (address as above). Castellani antici- pates 's successful Romeo and Juliet (1968) in his atten- tion to realistic background detail. Both tdirectors extensively adapted Shakespeare's text, playing down the cynicism of , playing up the

romantic of the lovers. Where does adaptation become outright revision? Castellani's attention to fifteenth-century Italian decor, his

insistently naturalistic acting, and his irreverent pruning of the text are enough to make 'scholars blanch--yet the film made movie critics applaud, winning the Grand Prix de Venice when it came out in 1954. Castellani ob- scures parts of the text, but as if questing for the fabled "Subtext", at times he does so only to reveal in vivid pictorial form the emotions which lie beneath the formal poetic surface, revivifying through film techniques the play's rhetoric, lively for Shakespeare's first audience

and for those of us who have learned to like it, but sadly dead for most twentieth-century audiences. As with an eighteenth-century adaptation for the neoclassical stage, what is interesting is not only what the director has done to Shakespeare, but how Shakespeare comes to new life. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. d. Franco Zeffirelli. s. Burton, . Color. 1966. Columbia Cinematheque (address as above). Zeffirelli's Shrew raises the same questions of adaptation which his Romeo and Juliet and Castellani's does, because all three use the same approach: lavish Italianate backgrounds, a text trimmed and translated into pictor- ial actions, and a focus on the central love interest at the expense of

subplot. In this case, Burton and Taylor take over as and Kate, thereby excluding Christopher Sly and his Induction, and obscuring the im- portance of Bianca and the other suitors. Yet, as an introduction to Shake- speare, the film succeeds. Burton and Taylor are wonderfully type-cast, Burton savoring every bawdy innuendo--especially his rascally crack "What, my tongue in your tail, Kate?"--and Taylor vacillating between virago and vixen, by turns inflamed with outrage at the way men treat her, then, as when she peers at Burton through the peep-hole in the shutters, fascinated by the man with the spirit to match hers. The final banquet scene, in which the errant wives are chastised by the reformed Kate is a masterpiece of irony. From what we have seen before, we are sure that she cannot mean all that male chauvinism she mouths, but what does she mean? It as at once

an assertion of the alliance by which she and Petruchio will make the world their apple, and a sly, wily realization that by playing the losing game, she is the ultimatevictor. In ways perhaps unforeseen by Shakespeare. the issues are very contemporary, and the film always provokes interesting dis- cussions of the play.

Of course this survey, which might casily be extended, cannot be de- finitive. Films may change over from one distributor to another: they may be withdrawn from circulation; or they may be newly released. Distributors' catalogues, sent on request, provide up-to-date facts on rentals. Further information on these and other films appears in the filmography of Charles 'Eckert's Focus on Shakespeare Films, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1973, 165-78, a book which collects critical essays on the films. The reader

may also wish to consult Peter Morris's Shakespeare on Film, Canadian Film Institute, Ottawa: 1964; Roger Manvell's Shakespeare and the Film,Praeger, New York: 1971; and "Shakespeare on Film," a collection of articles in Literature/Film Quarterly I, Winter, 1973 (Salisbury State College; Salis- buy, MD 21801): And readers living nearby may wish to attend the Shakes- peare Film Series at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a schedule and information, write Shakespeare Film Series, Department of English, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801.

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